Rolling the Dice

For a team that hasn’t won the World Series in 107 years, the Cubs draw like gangbusters, thanks in large part to a distinctive ballpark and luck.  Let me explain.

Before lights were installed in 1988, they owned the television airwaves in the afternoon, at least for any baseball-minded kid.  If the Cubs were your team, you put them on in the afternoon after school; with luck, Jack Brickhouse was announcing a game only in the fifth or sixth inning.  If they weren’t your team, you put them on anyway in hopes of seeing them lose like they did to the Mets, 19-1, on a glorious day in May of 1964.  Either way, you were watching the Cubs on WGN.  Young fans became adult fans with kids of their own who also turned on WGN to watch their team.

In 1968, the White Sox aided the cause by switching over to Channel 32, a UHF station; that left WGN—with a superior broadcast picture—to focus on the Cubs.  Thirteen years later, Jerry Reinsdorf booted Harry Caray out of the broadcast booth on the South Side, which is how he ended up doing Cub games on WGN.  Then WGN went on cable nationwide.  The rest is turnstile history.

But that could all end if the Cubs aren’t careful, never mind that it looks like they’ll be back on WGN for 45 games or for the next several years.  By my count, Cub games will be broadcast on any of five local stations, and seven, if you count Fox and ESPN.  People might go channel-hunting for a good team, but not a bad one.  The Cubs appear to be willing to take that risk in order to set up their own network a la the Dodgers.

Then come 2020 or so, and everything old will be new again, with games again on one primary channel.  The only difference is it’ll be far from free.